


45 Minutes and 24 Seconds (Until We Run Out of Time)

by UselessLesbianLaughter



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 05:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11913978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UselessLesbianLaughter/pseuds/UselessLesbianLaughter
Summary: It's the utmost ordinary day for a bust, a regular gig, get in, get out, nothing special.Until Erin finds herself standing on a bomb, Holtzmann staring into her eyes intensely. What do you do when your whole world is set on a timer of less than an hour? Any sane person would make a run for it but Holtzmann sets out to break out of this situation together. But will she be fast enough?





	45 Minutes and 24 Seconds (Until We Run Out of Time)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the official ending. 
> 
>  
> 
> Yes. There is an alternative ending out there. Do you want me to take your heart and crush it? Well, if you do, here's the link http://archiveofourown.org/works/11914038. It's a lot less happy than this one my friends. The one where things GO WRONG.
> 
> Thanks to holtz-i-am-your-gf from Tumblr for beta reading both this and the alternative ending.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoys and please do remember to leave a comment if you do.

The unimaginable never seems to happen on bad days. It creeps up on you when you least expect it, often on the most beautiful of days.

The sun was bright on Holtz’s face as she stacked equipment on the Ecto-1.

 

“Need any help with that?” Erin asked, leaning on the side of the car.

“Nope, I’m good actually, but thanks for the offer, sweet cheeks,” Holtz replied, attaching the last proton gun to the roof, her shirt lifting up slightly, revealing bare skin and toned abs. The physicist drew in a sharp breath, standing up straight and walking towards Holtzmann. She smirked.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I just finished loading the equi… oh.” The smile faded from Holtz’s face only to come back half a moment later wider and more mischievous than ever.

 

Erin had called it ‘their spot’, the blind spot where no one could ever sight them making out. Their dark not-so-dark corner between the walls. So this definitely wasn’t the first time for them to be giggling between kisses in the garage, yet it still felt like the first time. Every time felt like the first time in a new, fresh way. Every time was better than the last. It was, in a way, even exciting keeping their relationship a secret. Erin had never felt younger; this was the youth she’d missed out on before and it was truly as sweet as everyone said it was.

 

“Got a bust!” Abby’s voice echoed through and past the firehouse walls. 

 

“Shit…” Holtzmann chuckled under her breath, pressing one last kiss on Erin’s face, just slightly missing her lips. They rushed upstairs, a button left unbuttoned on Erin’s flannel, a few strands of hair fallen from Holtz’s signature do. Truly they were ninjas, and no one ever suspected anything was going on between them.

 

Patty gave them the address and a crash course on the history of the building. Abby was already waiting for them in the driver’s seat.

 

“Let’s go bust some ghosts!”

 

The siren blared through the air as the car took off in a hurry.

 

“It should be a fairly easy gig, get in, get out. Just one ghost, doesn’t appear particularly malevolent but the owners of the building aren’t too happy about sharing their space with the paranormal,” Abby explained.

 

The ghost, to be fair, was a rather small one. It didn’t exactly seem to have an urge to even fight back. If ghosts could surrender, that would be it. Maybe it was just sick of the mortal world. Holtz was laughing about it with Erin when something clicked under the physicist’s feet, something much more ominous than the actual ghost. The laughter cut in half with a halt.

 

“Erin?”

“Holtz… I think I’m standing on a bomb.”

“Alright, let’s not jump to conclusions here but just in case don’t move yet. Don’t wanna mess with our luck.”

“Erin, Holtz! Get out of there, quick!” Abby’s voice echoed through the walls and the floors.

“Well, I think that’s our confirmation…” Erin muttered.

“Holtz, you really should get out of here. I know these guys are professionals but we’re still dealing with a literal bomb. If I shift the wrong way or someone downstairs cuts the wrong wire, this place will blow and I don’t want you risking your life unnecessarily,” Erin said.

“First off, you’re gonna be fine. Secondly, if I leave, who’s gonna be your bomb buddy?” Holtz’s grin was wide and bright as ever.

“My… bomb buddy?” Sometimes Erin was sure the engineer had officially and completely finally lost her mind.

“You might be standing there for a while, can’t afford to let you get bored.” Holtz winked.

A man walked into the room, his face giving nothing away.

“Good news first: We’ve got some of our best people working on the situation. If anyone will get you out of this situation, it’s these people. Experts in their field. Now, well… It’s pressure sensitive, just as you suspected. If you move, this place will blow. We’ve identified a timer on the bomb; you seem to have set it off when you stepped here. We are also quite sure that the bomb was intentionally placed there,” he spoke without hesitance.

“How much time do I have?”

 

“45 minutes and,” he checked his watch, “24 seconds.”

 

Holtz put a timer on her phone. Erin took a deep breath.

“What if I just, you know, put on a bomb suit and pull her off?” Holtz asked, only half-joking.

“This isn’t just some small bomb. The whole building will blow if it goes off, and it’s extremely weight sensitive. Any small alteration will set it off immediately. That would be an excellent way to kill everyone in or near the house. You’re free to stay here for now, though. Eventually, if we don’t manage to disable it, we will have to evacuate; when the timer hits ten, it’s time to get out. Just one more thing.” He took out a can of spray paint and drew a yellow circle around Erin. “Make sure to not cross this line. I’ll let you know if we have any new information.” He nodded respectfully and walked out, his steps going down the stairs echoing through the house.

“Well, this could be fun.” Holtzmann shrugged with her hands in her pockets, walking across the room.

“I just… don’t get it.”

“Get what?” Holtz stopped mid-step.

“Who would leave a bomb… for  _ me _ ?” Erin asked, less from Holtz and more from herself. “I don’t have any recorded enemies, at least no one that would go so far.”

“Yeah, you’re way too nice for that,” Holtz nodded.

“I mean, sure, if they wanted to take out the Ghostbusters as a whole or something, but then why just one bomb? And why here? If they just wanted to take us all out they’d have something that would blow as soon as I stepped on it.”

“That leaves us with three options: Either the bomb was for someone else…” Holtz started.

“…or they want something from one of us…” Erin continued.

“…or it’s some sort of a puzzle.” Holtz finished.

“So how do we figure it out?” Erin asked.

“Patty!” They shouted in unison.

Both Abigail and Patricia had left the house and were sitting in the Ecto-1, gripping onto their seats at a safe distance.

Holtz dialed Patty. She picked up on the first ring.

“You got anything new? Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Uh… no, not really. Hey, Patty, look. We need your help. Who’s the owner of this place?”

“It was inherited just a few days ago, that’s why we got the bust. The new owner wasn’t taking too kindly to the paranormal presence but the old one... His name was Harold, Harold McCrow or… something, Mc something-bird. He was a big believer in the paranormal and fully claimed there was a ghost living with him. I read up on it earlier in the car; turns out the guy wasn’t too fond of his closest family, aka the guy who owns the house now.”

“The bomb must’ve been for him,” Erin said.

“Well, if it was I ain’t sure who put it there because his grandpapa, The Ghost Enthusiast, passed away a while ago.”

“He believed in the paranormal. He planted the bomb when he was alive and thought he could interact with the mortal world as he did when he was alive as a ghost. He wanted something from the new owner, obviously,” the physicist spoke.

“Buuut ghosts can’t interact with this realm like they did when they were alive. They kind of just go batshit. And even if he could’ve, we kind of trapped him. Aand you’re not his grandson, so you don’t have what he wanted.” Holtz looked down.

“And we don’t know what the previous owner wanted from the new one,” Erin added.

“So that leaves us with…”

“Nothing.” Erin concluded.

“Where’s the current owner now?” Erin asked, hunching closer to the phone.

“He’s out of town… Out of the country, actually. The police contacted him but he didn’t know anything or at least didn’t say,” Abby spoke from the other end of the line.

“Dead end.” Erin sighed. “Uh… Abby, I’ll call you in a few, alright?”

“Erin, it’s going to be alright,” Abby reassured, her voice uncertain.

“I know. I know, we’ll just talk. Like friends do.”

“Alright.”

 

No one dared to say goodbye, so Holtz simply hung up.

“How much time is left?” Erin asked. Holtzmann hesitantly checked the timer.

“31 minutes. Great,” Erin said, sarcasm spiked in her voice.

“Hey! It’s 31 minutes and 42 seconds. Don’t underestimate the seconds.”

The physicist smiled at Holtz’s attempt to comfort her. It was sweet and one of those things Holtzmann was usually the best at, but this time Erin had to force herself to face the reality: time was running out.

“Holtz, there’s something I want you to promise me in case I don’t-”

“You’re going to be fine, Erin. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“Just promise me you’ll do it, alright?”

Holtzmann hesitated for a moment. “Okay. I promise.”

“Good.” Erin nodded, hiding behind a wall of reassurance. There was still a chance, right? Holtz could be right.  _ I’ll be fine.  _ Truth be, Erin was rather sure that she’d be fine, come whatever. She wasn’t so sure about Holtz, however. She looked right past the woman as she spoke up again.

“There’s a box, back at the firehouse, it’s black, maybe ten inches times four, maybe more. You’ll know it when you see it, it’s in my top right shelf under some research papers. If something goes wrong, I want you to open it.”

“Okay. But nothing’s going to go wrong. These people work with this kinda stuff every day,” Holtz spoke with a confident half-smile.

Erin nodded. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

There was a knock on the doorframe and the man from earlier walked through the doorway.

“Our team has located this device,” he lifted up a calculator-like black box with keys and a narrow screen on it. “It requires a passcode. We concluded the passcode will disable the device, but there’s a catch: enter the wrong code and it’ll automatically set off the bomb. We tried to figure it out, but… it’s unhackable. Since it’s your life on the line, we decided we would leave it to you. Our people will be working until the last minute, but once the timer hits .30 we have to get everyone out. This will give you a one in a million chance.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“We can’t access most of the device, and it has a very complex structure. Sure, there’s still hope, but we have to be realistic, Dr. Gilbert.”

 

Erin nodded. “I understand.”

“We’re doing everything in our power,” he offered.

“Thank you.” The words were no comfort, but Erin was still grateful. She watched the man disappear down the stairs again.

“So we’re just supposed to wait?” Holtz asked, fear recognizable in her voice for the first time.

“It’s the best we can do. God, I wish I could… I just want to hold you close and kiss you until your forget this damn bomb. But that would blow us both up so that’s out of the question,” she took a deep breath.

“Hey… You’ll get to do plenty of that once we get out of here.”

“I hope so.” Erin ran a hand through her hair.

“Well, there’s the password thingie. I’m assuming the ol’ man wanted his grandson to figure out what it was.”

“Fun, considering the fact that neither of us is his grandson and the dude claims to know nothing about this whole thing.”

“I could let gramps out of the containment unit and see if he’s willing to say anything.”

“Holtz, the only speaking ghost we’ve ever encountered was Rowan and he’d planned his weird world destruction via the paranormal thing out for years. He had the technology and we knew his motives. We don’t know anything about this one.”

“Yeah, but what if he was prepared for his death?”

“Don’t you think he would’ve at least resisted us if he had been?”

“There has to be some way to figure this out, alright?”

“Look, he was a crazy old man that left a bomb for his grandson. I don’t think his thought process made much sense back when he was alive. It’s a dead end, pun  _ not _ intended. How much time left?”

Holtzmann sighed and checked the timer. “23 minutes, 4 seconds.”

“You have to get out when it hits ten. Look, it’s time to face the facts. We both know this could end badly. And if it does… I want you to know I love you. We didn’t get enough time together, but it’s been the best damn time of my life. Everything you need you’ll find in my will, it has funeral and burial specifications, you won’t have to worry about deciding anything or spending too much–”

“Erin, stop.” Holtz smiled bitterly. “I know. Trust me, I know this could end… in a certain way but we don’t have to talk about it. Waste of time. Plus, we’ve put our lives in danger before. We always make it out alive. We always have. Remember that time we were on a bust, just the two of us, and one of the ghosts punched me through a window?”

“Yeah,” Erin chuckled. “We do seem to attract danger. I had to manage two ghosts alone.”

“And you did great. And then you sat with me while I was bleeding out. I mean, the sexual tension was off the charts!”

“It was not!” Erin’s eyes suddenly went wide and her eyebrows jumped through the roof.

“It so was. Remember you  _ almost _ said I love you. You would’ve if the ambulance hadn’t cut you off.”

“I would not have, I did no such thing.”

“And that time a ghost locked us into a freezer? I mean, we were cuddling.”

“That was a survival tactic. We were huddling for warmth.”

“Cuddling.”

“I was sure we’d die there. Abby sure took her time with figuring out we were even locked in there,” Erin chuckled. “Thank you. For being there for me. In that freezer. And today.”

“Always.”

Holtz lifted up her arm, holding her palm straight. Erin put her hand against Holtz’s and the engineer intertwined their fingers. The physicist looked around anxiously for a moment, confirming they hadn’t accidentally set off the explosives. Silence. She smiled. She wanted to squeeze Holtz’s hand but didn’t dare test her luck. Holtz smiled back at her.

“Ten minutes! Dr. Holtzmann, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the building.”

 

Holtz let her teeth sink deep into her bottom lip, biting back the tears gathering in her eyes.

“You have to go,” Erin spoke.

“I know.” Holtz nodded, still not letting go, still not leaving.

“Holtz. Go. For me.”

The blonde smiled, the small grin that didn’t reach her overwhelmingly sad eyes.

“Okay.” She carefully pulled her hand away. Taking slow steps, she moved towards the doorway.

“Holtz…” The woman turned around to face Erin. “I love you.”

Holtzmann nodded wiping away a tear.

“I love you, too.” She smiled, the curve in her lips sad but sincere. Erin smiled back as Holtzmann turned away and walked out of the doorway.

The physicist took a deep breath. She took out her phone and dialed Abby.

“Hey, friend… Turns out you might have to bust an Erin ghost after all…”

“Erin, no.”

“I’m sorry, Abbs. I don’t have much time left. I wish I could give you a longer goodbye and I wish this wouldn’t be happening but we can’t always get what we want. I just wanted you to know how grateful I am to have you as a friend and how much you matter to me. Thank you for… for being you.”

“Erin, I…”

“I’m so sorry, Abby. I have less than 10 minutes left and I have to call my mom and I… I don’t want to cry in front of you, even over the phone. Because we’re not crybabies. I’m sorry, I’m hanging up,” Erin spoke with regret sewn through her words. She ended the call and dialed her mother.

The call went to voicemail.

“Hey, mom… It’s… it’s Erin. I just… wanted to say hello and hear your voice and say I love you. Yeah, that’s all.” She put her phone back into her back pocket, smiling sadly.

Erin closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. The Earth could stop spinning. It was so, so quiet. The ringing in her ears persisted relentlessly while every other sound slowly faded from the world. There was no noise, no music, the pianist disappeared with the piano, leaving nothing. She pressed her eyes together so harshly that stars filled her vision and perhaps, holding her breath she wondered that perhaps this was it. This was the void and it was her world now.

 

Her knees felt like buckling as gravity seemed to pour out of the room as if it was liquid. This wasn’t how she’d imagined dying. She wasn’t bleeding, there was no screaming, no tears or sirens. Her life wasn’t flashing before her eyes and the constant metronome of her heartbeat was no faster than usual.

For the last time she opened her eyes.  _ I must be hallucinating _ . The familiar pair of sky blue eyes could not be standing right in front of her.

 

“Jillian, you promised you’d leave.”

“I did, but I did not promise I wouldn’t come back now did I?” The blonde winked, the familiar motion there for the hundredth or the thousandth time yet still maintaining its charm. Perhaps not all of the colorful dots appearing in front of her eyes were stars, the blue ones, the ones right next to each other, perhaps they were Holtz’s eyes engraved so deeply into her memory not even death could erase them.

Erin snapped out of her thoughts. Holtz was real, really there, too real. In her mind Erin could hear a singular thought echoing, screaming.  _ Get out! _

 

“You have to go. Please, I’ve made peace with this. I’m ready to go but I’m not taking you with me.” The physicist furrowed her brow. For a moment the smile faded from Holtz’s face, revealing the concern in her face, making all the blonde curls that had come loose from her hair-do far more obvious. She then smiled again, slowly this time, gently. She’d never looked so casually human. Erin remembered precisely why she’d fallen in love with the woman, besides the mystery of Pringle cans and ghosts, un-matching socks and yellow goggles, besides that Holtz was so very human. Raw emotions looked so beautiful on her face. She was always doing her best to help everyone even if it didn’t always work out.

 

“I didn’t come here to die.”

“Then why are you here, Holtzmann?” Confusion filled Erin’s mind, placing a strange feeling next to all the fear and apathy: hope.

“To save your life. Of course, that means to diffuse a bomb which is… more fun when your life isn’t on the line.”

“Holtz… Are you saying you have a plan?”

“Something like that. It’s more like a plan B or a plan C.”

“What was plan A?”

“I don’t think there was a plan A. We just skipped right over to C.”

“Okay then, I’m going to pretend that makes sense. What’s plan C?”

“We figure out the passcode.”

“Holtz, that’s a dead end, remember? We have less than 5 minutes left. There’s a one in a million chance we’ll get it right.”

“That means we still have a chance. Erin. I’m never leaving you. Always there for each other, right? You could’ve left me when I was bleeding out or when that one ghost pulled me into a portal but you didn’t. You stayed. You fought for me. You won, Erin. We’ll figure this out.” Holtz smiled with confidence that’d lead you to believe she actually knew what she was doing.

“Hold on.” Something clicked in Erin’s eyes.

“What?”

“He claimed he was living with a ghost, right? But we only busted one ghost. And I’m pretty sure that was him. So what happened to the other one, if there was another one? I think we were approaching this from the wrong angle. We were trying to think like his grandson, but we should’ve been thinking like him. I don’t think he wanted his grandson to die; otherwise he wouldn’t have left the timer and the passcode. Why go through all that trouble just to kill someone?” Erin spoke in the voice Holtz knew well, the voice she got when she was close to solving a complex equation. This was the time to let the physicist work her logical magic.

“He wouldn’t.”

“Right. So sure, it might be a riddle. But, and I know gut instincts are… stupid, I just… I don’t think it’s a riddle. I think he wanted to prove something. Remember when Abby talked about the call? She was so pissed off because the guy wasn’t taking us seriously. I think he found something abnormal in the house but is still refusing to fully believe it was a ghost. Because he didn’t believe in ghosts. That’s why the previous owner didn’t want him to have the house because no one ever believed him about his ghost. I think the reason we didn’t find a second ghost was because the only thing keeping it here was the old owner. It wasn’t just any ghost, it was someone he knew. Someone he loved. I think he wanted to prove ghosts were real with this less-than-sane method. Call Patty, now!”

Holtzmann hastily dialed the woman, still somewhat dumbfounded, heart skipping every other beat or fluttering at a thousand miles per hour, she couldn’t quite tell which.

“Hey. Patty. Erin here. Sorry I didn’t call earlier. Short on time, no time to explain. The old owner, do you know anything about his history? Ex-wives, deceased spouses, close friends, anyone that mattered to him?”

“Erin we have less than a minute left, ” Holtz spoke, short of breath.

“Patty, if you don’t know, look it up asap.”

“Uhh… He had a wife, died of cancer two or three decades ago.”

“What was her name?”

“Lisa Mc-”

Erin hung up the call.

“Lisa. That’s the password.”

“The keys only have numbers.”

“And the code is more than four digits long. It’s… Holtz, it’s like an old phone keyboard. L is 5 three times, I is 4 three times, S is 7 four times, A is 2 once. 55544477772. That’s the passcode. You’ve less than a minute left, hand me the damn thing and you can still get out of here.”

“I’m not handing you the damn thing because it’d change the weight on the pressure plate and we’d die. And I’m not leaving. We ride together, we die together. But we’re not dying today.”

_ 20 seconds left. _

She carefully typed the numbers onto the keyboard.

_ 10 seconds. _

The green button stared back at her.

“Together?” She asked.

“Together.” Erin nodded.

_ 4 seconds left. _

They pressed their fingers onto the green button, shutting their eyes as tight as possible. This could’ve still been the wrong code.

The silly ringtone of Holtz’s timer went off. Erin opened her eyes first, then Holtz. Erin started laughing first and in a second they found themselves giggling manically. The physicist carefully stepped out of the yellow circle. As soon as she’d gotten both of her feet out, she practically tackled Holtz with an embrace so tight and so full of love the engineer might’ve suffocated.

“We did it,” Erin whispered, ecstatic. Her smile reached her eyes and went even past them. She kissed the engineer, long and hard. “I would’ve missed that.”

She took Holtz’s hand, squeezed it, and walked downstairs with her. She opened the door and was met with an unexpected cheer. She brushed a strand of blonde hair out of Holtz’s face, faces close enough to go in for another kiss. Before she could, though, she saw Abby running towards them, Patty close behind.

“Later,” Holtz whispered with a wink.

Abby put her hands on her knees, out of breath. “Shit, scared us there, Gilbert.”

“Sorry.” Erin laughed.

“Oh come on, kiss the woman already. She risked her life for you.” Patty chuckled as Erin went bright red.

“Wait… You knew about us?”

“Yeah, you’re about as good at hiding that stuff as Trump is at being president.”

Holtz’s laugh filled the space around them and Erin shut her up with a quick kiss.

_ LATER THAT NIGHT _

Holtz is cuddled up close to Erin, feeling safe for the first time in forever.

“Do you think he’ll ever pass over?” Erin asks, voice soft and hushed.   
“Who, Harold? Yeah… I think so. I don’t think he ever actually cared about the house. Lisa’s gone so… It should just be a matter of time. I hope it’s nice there, wherever ‘there’ is.” Holtz strokes the physicist’s hair.

“So what’s in the box?” the engineer asks.

“Thought you’d bring it up. The box is empty now, actually. I was keeping it for some special occasion but… I realized today that every day I spend with you is a special occasion,” Erin says, getting off the couch, standing up straight and taking a deep breath before gently dropping to her knee.

She takes out a tiny velvet box and opens it to reveal a golden ring.

“I know this is probably… very sudden. But… that’s our life. We don’t know what tomorrow brings, heck, we don’t know what today brings. It’s crazy and sometimes it’s terrifying and it’s the best life I could’ve imagined. So… Jillian Holtzmann… Will you-”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t let me finish.” Erin laughs.

“Sorry. Uh… continue,” Holtz says.

“Jillian Holtzmann, will you marry me?”

“Yes. Yes! So many times yes! Holy fuck!”

The blonde cups her fresh fiancée’s face and pulls her into a close kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback vampire, I am v sad n insecure, feed me!!  
> Seriously though, I am so grateful for any and all comments, they absolutely make my day


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